AMD's ATI Radeon HD 5850 Video Card Review @ [H]

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Brent_Justice

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AMD's ATI Radeon HD 5850 Video Card Review - The ATI Radeon HD 5850 is launching today! Is is based on the same 5800 architecture as the HD 5870. We aim to find out how it compares to an HD 5870 in single GPU and 5850 CrossFireX configurations. The ATI Radeon HD 5850 is bringing with it an incredible PC gaming value.
 
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Daauuummmnnnn. Crossfire is getting way better at scaling.
 
Bah, shoulda firsted when I got the chance.

(of course, that'll probably just get my post deleted)

Great review. :D
 
Excellent review! Now I feel like doing 5850 Xfire, even thought I don't need that much power.

Also, I'm glad you added in that statement on nvidia... was getting tired of posts telling people to wait on a video card with no release date.
 
Great review

If you are waiting for NVIDIA to jump out of the GPU closet with a 5800 killer and put the fear into you for making a 5800 series purchase for Halloween, we suggest paper dragons are not that scary. We feel as though it will be mid-to-late Q1’10 before we see anything pop out of NVIDIA’s sleeve besides its arm. We are seeing rumors of a Q4’09 soft launch of next-gen parts, but no hardware till next year and NVIDIA has given us no reason to believe otherwise.
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Nvidia isn't going to have anything ready until Jan at least? They are going to be losing a whole lot of holiday sales, even if they drop the prices on 285/295 (and they're going to have to...like yesterday.)
 
Kyle/Brent: could you comment on the noise level of the 5850 in comparison to the 5870 pls? Is the 5850 quieter than the 5870 or gtx 285?


Very decent performance. This card seems like it'll be a good overclocker and will have a great bang for the buck. Also happy to see that noise levels are low :)
Up here in canada, you are looking at around 450 for the 5870 or 300$ for the 5850. At that price, the 5850 seems to be a great value.

Tks for the great review [H]
 
EnderW said:
why on earth are you using that oldass hard drive?
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My test system hdd bit the dust before I started all the 5800 testing a couple of weeks ago, sadly I had to use an old spare I had, I have a WD Black Edition on the way to replace it.
 
Can we expect availability today/tomorrow or Friday?

Guru3D's review mentioned Friday. I'm hearing confusing information.
 
Couldn't wait for this card. Was worried about power requirements. Perfect for my SFF :)


Great review as always Brent :)
 
Great review I will definately pick this up in the next 2mns for my new build. I had a question about the HDMI does the audio out work on it if you hook up to say a 720p LCD TV screen? I wanted to find out since it would mean I could finally replace my computer speakers.
 
EnderW said:
curious as to if that would affect the results as I've seen the drive can affect minimum FPS

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/intelx25mlaunch_090808151933/17331.png
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3403&p=14
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I have used this Seagate HDD on all the testing in the 5870 and 5850 evaluation with each video card, the system setup is the same for all cards tested in both evaluations. And, with 6GB of RAM on the system, I highly doubt it is affecting gameplay performance. Also, we do not use benchmarks which is what was used in the linked tests above, we perform real-world run-throughs several times. The HDD was a non factor in my gaming, I did not witness hard drive thrashing or poor hdd performance slowing down gameplay.
 
Wow. Just Wow...
I can't wait till these drop below $200 so I can afford one.:eek: $275 is still a deal considering the prices of the current closest competitor part, GTX285. I guess I can't blame AMD for trying to make a profit.:D


GTX285 Prices should drop soon as these are on the shelves.

This card will be listed for less than $275 and it performs as well or better than a GTX285 in most cases. The cheapest GTX285 on Newegg is $325 ($295 after MIR). The rest of the GTX285's are averaging around the $350 mark.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...2&bop=And&ActiveSearchResult=True&Order=PRICE
 
great review as usual, but i gotta laugh at the way the market is right now. amd is getting hammered by intel in the cpu market but they're kicking ass in the gpu market. go figure that one.

poor nvidia...they're in for a rough time. especially seeing as how they'll have nothing new for x-mas. thats going to hurt.
 
Great review but one thing.

Stalker CS should be part of the review imho,also GTX285 in sli as a reference card.

Anyway good job guys keep on,can't wait for 5870 crossfire review i think that one coming soon?
 
psyside said:
Great review but one thing.

Stalker CS should be part of the review imho,also GTX285 in sli as a reference card.

Anyway good job guys keep on,can't wait for 5870 crossfire review i think that one coming soon?
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We had an unusually short amount of time to evaluate 5850, coming right off the 5870 evaluation, no sleep for me! Yes 5870 CrossFireX is next, and more games will be included. I also have an Eyefinity performance evaluation in mind to test 5850 and 5870 performance in a 3x1 config with many games. There is lots planned, and lots to evaluate, so just hang tight.
 
Great! thanks for your answer and awesome reviews keep on guys!

Also one more question Brent, do you think that is possible to except similar scaling to 4890s in crossfire? that cards was impressive and knowing 5870 is similar tech do you think that is possible or we can except some similar boost or at least lets say 15% more.FWIW in some other 5870 reviews we already saw like 80-90% scaling on the 5870s that would be awesome! :cool:

Sorry for my bad english i'm from EU.
 
Very good review guys, Pretty stellar performance as well. I think I'll be picking up this card seeing how I only game in 1680x1050 right now.
 
can i play crysis with the 5850 with all enthusiast settings and some lesser af and aa at 1080p?

and stiill get about 30fps?
 
Read the review maybe?

Edit: Ok in case your lazy yes you can, just you need to turn down enthusiast shaders a bit and you will be fine.
 
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The 5850 is looking to be a very nice little video card. It's a gtx 285 slayer in a friendly 9.5 inch form factor. Especially at the asking price of $259. Once bing cash back gets online for these, it could clock in under $225, making it a very popular choice for Holiday present!
 
How about some Eyefinity performance numbers for the 5850?

I am very interested in running 3x22 or 3x1080p screens with a 5850.
 
Damn.. I'm itching to upgrade.. and the 5850 looks like a very worthy upgrade from my 4870.. at a good price. I can probably sell the 4870 at the office for a fair price and upgrade to the 5850 for under $200 out of pocket.
 
Thanks for this awesome review. This really is an awesome card. Even with Crysis the performance is really good. I wonder if the reduced amount of shader clusters on the HD 5850 is holding it back a bit in comparison with the 5870. Or maybe the lower clock speeds.




When I buy a new computer at the end of October, this will be my new card. :)
 
Wow, Home run. I see lots of Crossfire in some peoples future.

They better get that Eyefinity working with multi-gpu PDQ, :D
 
now this numbers looks very impressive..

I would laugh if nVidia still not having any price drop on GTX 285...which is the most retarded price tag ever....
 
Seems like a good card, but I'm still waiting for the 5770 or whatever it will be called.
 
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